1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device for arranging flowers and other aesthetic decorations.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Flower arrangement is a large business in the US and elsewhere. The selection of flowers and other vegetation, the angular and spatial separation and relative heights are important in providing an aesthetically pleasing product.
Also, it is important to be able to accurately produce the same arrangement repeatedly. It is also important to be able to accurately reproduce a given arrangement remotely at a different location. This would be important for national dealers of flowers which advertise and sell the flowers at one location which are intended to be sent to a recipient at another remote location. A floral shop near the recipient creates the arrangement and delivers it to the recipient. The delivered arrangement should look very similar to the one which the buyer bought.
Also, it is important to be able to cut the flower stem to size, visually eye the aesthetics and be able to adjust it if needed without the cut end of flowers drying out. This drying will start a natural sealing process of the stem and prohibiting the future intake of water, thus the flowers shelf life will be drastically shortened.
It is also important for one with little or no knowledge in floral art to be able to achieve an aesthetically pleasing arrangement. With the use of the aperture identifier the flowers can be cut to size and placed in the proper aperture achieving pleasing results.
Finally, it is important to be able to reproduce a given arrangement in a cost-effective manner. A device or tool which allows for rapid and consistent creation of an arrangement requiring little knowledge would be beneficial.
There are known devices for holding flowers and other similar arrangements described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,087,280 Sellinger, PCT/FR2002/003803 Lebreton et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 7,213,365 Van Zuylen.
Sellinger shows a very simple arrangement with one row of coils encircling a central wire coil. This is intended to hold arrangements, but does not act as a tool to insure consistent creation of arrangements.
Also, since it is constructed of wire coils, the stems are not easily inserted or extracted since leaves and protrusions on the stems get caught on the wire coils. These are designed to replace a vase.
The Lebreton patent application is designed for twisting the base of the flowers stems. There are no identifying marks of apertures and therefore it is not designed to provide for consistent reproducible arrangements. The base does not have legs allowing for liquid to fill the base of apertures thus the stems must be re-cut after the finished product for needed water intake.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,213,365 Van Zuylen describes a device for inserting flower stems in a grating to a bottom plate then twisting the stems to make an arrangement. Since the stems of flowers are placed through the grating to a bottom plate, and must be twisted, they are positioned in the grating vertically. If they were offset in various angles, they may become broken or tangled as they are twisted.
There are no means of keeping the stems moist during the creation of the flower arrangement.
There are no indications of identifying specific holes and therefore no way to exactly identify flower locations.
Currently, there is a current need for a device which acts as a tool to allow inexperienced users to quickly and efficiently produce quality arrangements with a high degree of accuracy and efficiency.